Thoughts on Life, Love, Politics, Hypocrisy and Coming Out in Mid-Life

Thursday, December 29, 2016

Trump and His Supporters Push "Racial Amnesia"

Many in the media and pundit circles - even some shortsighted Democrats - are spreading the meme that Donald Trump's election win was the result of a revolt by white working-class
voters. According to this deliberate myth, racism, sexism and religious bigotry had little, if anything, to do
with it. It was all about economics and a need for hope and/or desire for "change." As a piece at CNN points out, this myth has about as much credence as the South's myth of "The Lost Cause" which would have one believe that the Civil War was all about states' rights, that defending slavery had nothing to do with the cause of the war, and that the antebellum South was like the barbecue at Twelve Oaks in "Gone With the Wind." Why the effort? Put simply, Trump voters - and MANY were not economically stressed white working class - do not want to admit to themselves or their children and grandchildren or to have history recount that racial bigotry was a principal factor in their vote for Trump. This myth must be challenged and dispelled immediately. Gone With the Wind might have been a good book by some standards, but it was not remotely accurate history. Neither is the story line that white racism didn't propel trump to the presidency. Here are article highlights:

After President-elect Donald Trump's
recent victory, some of his supporters celebrated by flying Confederate battle
flags from pickup trucks and waving them at rallies.

But Trump's victory may mark the
resurgence of the Old South in another more sinister way: The return of
"racial amnesia."

That's what some historians are
saying as they watch a familiar storyline emerge. Trump's triumph is now being
roundly described as a revolt by white working-class voters; racism, sexism and
religious bigotry had little, if anything, to do with it.

People making this argument are
following a script first honed by another group of Americans who made history
disappear. After the Civil War, "Lost Cause" propagandists from the
Confederacy argued the war wasn't fought over slavery -- it was a
constitutional clash over state's rights, they said; hatred toward blacks had
nothing to do with it.

It was an audacious historical
cover-up -- to convince millions of Americans that what they'd just seen and
heard hadn't really happened. It worked then, and some historians say it could
work again with Trump.

"It's already happening
again," says Brooks D. Simpson, a leading Civil War historian who teaches
at Arizona State University. "A lot of people are saying we're going to
have to unite behind the new guy and forget what he had to say. People who feel
that they are part of those populations targeted by Trump are going to be told
by whites to get over it."

At first glance, comparing some
Trump supporters to ex-Confederates may seem absurd, even insulting. But
historians say both groups developed an uncanny ability to obscure the role
race played in transformative events and to persuade millions of Americans to
go along with the charade.

You don't have to pick on the South,
though, to spot racial amnesia. Racism is embedded in the daily lives of
ordinary Americans in ways that many forget.

Where Americans live, worship, send
their children to school -- much of it is driven by race, says David Billings,
a pastor who came of age as a white Southerner during the 1960s.

"Across the country, white
people withdrew from the 'public' sphere and migrated to 'whites only' suburbs
to evade racial integration. ... The word 'public' preceding words like
'housing,' 'hospital,' 'health care,' 'transportation,' 'defender,' 'schools,'
and even 'swimming pool' in some parts of the country became code words that
meant poor and most often black and Latino. The word 'private' began to mean
'better.' ''

Consider a contemporary issue that
seems race-neutral -- the movement to give vouchers to public school students
for private school. That effort started in the 1950s because many white
Americans didn't want their children to attend newly integrated public schools,
says Kevin M. Kruse, author of "White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern
Conservatism." Most Americans have forgotten that
today, Kruse says.

"There's a real reluctance of
some to acknowledge the part that race has played in American history," he
says. "You cannot understand American history without understanding the
fault lines of race. If we turn a blind eye to it, we're going to miss an
incredible amount of the picture."

The
Lost Cause campaign offers the definitive example of racial self-deception.
Before there was fake news, the Lost Cause propagandists were creating fake
history.

Their timing was audacious. They
didn't wait years to claim the Civil War wasn't fought over slavery. They started
making those claims immediately after the war ended, when the physical and
psychological wounds were still raw.

A year after the war ended, Edward
Pollard, a Southern newspaper editor, published, "The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of
the Confederates." Former Confederate leaders began to amplify
Pollard's argument that the war was over state sovereignty, not slavery.
Jefferson Davis, the former president of the Confederacy, claimed that
"slavery was in no way the cause of the conflict." Alexander H.
Stephens, the former vice president of the Confederacy, argued the war
"was not a contest between the advocates or opponents of that peculiar institution."

Confederate veterans' groups started
to spread the myth at reunions. So did storytellers. The Lost Cause was
recycled in early 20th century films like D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a
Nation," "Gone with the Wind" and Walt Disney's "Song of
the South." All recast the antebellum South as a moonlight and magnolia
paradise of happy slaves, affectionate slave owners and villainous Yankees.

Why would so many Southerners
embrace such a big lie? Part of it was embarrassment. They
had to decontaminate history by recasting what they did as a noble cause,
historians say.

The Lost Cause myth took hold even
though Americans could easily consult the public record. The declarations of
secession made by Southern states on the eve of the war cited slavery as the
cause. And Stephens, the Confederate vice president, said in a speech in South
Carolina in 1861 that the Confederacy was not founded on the "false
idea" that all men are created equal.

"The Confederacy, by contrast,
is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its
cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the
white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race is his natural and
moral condition," Stephens said.

The same dynamics that nurtured the
rise of the Lost Cause are evident now, some historians say.

Those who deny that racism and
xenophobia were central to Trump's victory are engaging in another Lost Cause
cover-up, they say.

"Anybody who says that the
recent election is not, at least in part, a racial event is functioning as an
apologist, whether they know it or not, for white prejudice," says, Joseph
Ellis, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian.

There are abundant examples of
Trump's explicit racist statements. He didn't campaign in dog whistles; he used
a bullhorn. He once called Mexican immigrants "rapists" and proposed
a travel ban on all Muslims entering the United States. Even Republican House
leader Paul Ryan once said Trump's comment that a federal judge couldn't do his
job because of his Mexican heritage was "the textbook definition of a
racist comment."

Trump's rise to political prominence
was driven in part by a conspiracy theory coated in racism. . . . . Those who say white voters can't be racist
because they elected a black president twice are ignoring another inconvenient
fact: Obama was elected despite opposition from white voters, political
scientist Cornell Belcher told Vox in a recent interview.

He said whites didn't put Obama in
the White House. Obama grabbed only 43% of the white vote in 2008 and 39% in
2012.

"The
majority of whites did not elect Obama, and that's the wolf at the door,"
Belcher told Vox. "The vast majority of whites did not support President
Obama and President Obama won back-to-back majorities, and that caused the
realization of their power waning. Mitt Romney ran up a higher score among white
voters than Ronald Reagan when Reagan had a landslide in 1984."

Sadly, this effort at myth making is all too consistent with the track record of Trump and the 81% of evangelical Christians who voted for him: lying and appealing to hatred towards others is their stock in trade.

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Out gay attorney in a committed relationship; formerly married and father of three wonderful children; sometime activist and political/news junkie; survived coming out in mid-life and hope to share my experiences and reflections with others.
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